Lewin also proposed Herbert Blumer's interactionist perspective of 1937 as an alternative to the nature versus nurture debate. For instance, he introduced the concept of hodological space or the simplest route achieved through the resolution of different field of forces, oppositions, and tensions according to their goals. Lewin coined the notion of genidentity, which has gained some importance in various theories of space-time and related fields. He was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lewin died in Newtonville, Massachusetts, of heart failure in 1947. Lewin taught for a time at Duke University. The Tavistock journal, Human Relations, was founded with two early papers by Lewin entitled "Frontiers in Group Dynamics". When Trist and A T M Wilson wrote to Lewin proposing a journal in partnership with their newly founded Tavistock Institute and his group at MIT, Lewin agreed. Later, he became director of the Center for Group Dynamics at MIT.įollowing World War II, Lewin was involved in the psychological rehabilitation of former occupants of displaced persons camps with Dr. Earlier, he had spent six months as a visiting professor at Stanford in 1930, but on his immigration to the United States, Lewin worked at Cornell University and for the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station at the University of Iowa. A few years after relocating to America, Lewin began asking people to pronounce his name as "Lou-in" rather than "Le-veen" because the misspelling of his name by Americans had led to many missed phone calls. Lewin immigrated to the United States in August 1933 and became a naturalized citizen in 1940. Trist was impressed with his theories and went on to use them in his studies on soldiers during the Second World War.
In that year, he met with Eric Trist, of the London Tavistock Clinic. But when Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 the Institute members had to disband, moving to England and then to America.
Lewin often associated with the early Frankfurt School, originated by an influential group of largely Jewish Marxists at the Institute for Social Research in Germany. In 1933, Lewin had tried to negotiate a teaching position as the chair of psychology as well as the creation of a research institute at the Hebrew University. He served as a professor at the University of Berlin from 1926 to 1932, during which time he conducted experiments about tension states, needs, motivation, and learning. He also joined the Psychological Institute of the University of Berlin where he lectured and gave seminars on both philosophy and psychology. Lewin had originally been involved with schools of behavioral psychology before changing directions in research and undertaking work with psychologists of the Gestalt school of psychology, including Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Kohler. Their daughter Miriam was born in 1931, and their son Daniel was born in 1933. They divorced around 1927, and Maria immigrated to Palestine with the children. In 1919, the couple had a daughter Esther Agnes, and in 1922, their son Fritz Reuven was born. Lewin studied associations, will, and intention for his dissertation, but he did not discuss it with Stumpf until his final doctoral examination. Even though Lewin worked under Stumpf to complete his dissertation, their relationship did not involve much communication. Lewin wrote a dissertation proposal asking Stumpf to be his supervisor, and Stumpf assented. Due to a war wound, he returned to the University of Berlin to complete his PhD. He served in the German army when World War I began. While at the University of Berlin, Lewin took 14 courses with Carl Stumpf (1848–1936). By the summer of 1911, the majority of his courses were in psychology. By the Easter semester of 1911, his interests had shifted toward philosophy. In April 1910, he transferred to the Royal Friedrich-Wilhelms University of Berlin, where he was still a medical student. He became involved with the socialist movement and women's rights around this time. In 1909, he entered the University of Freiburg to study medicine, but transferred to the University of Munich to study biology. From 1905 to 1908, Lewin studied at the Kaiserin Augusta Gymnasium, where he received a classical humanistic education. The family moved to Berlin in 1905, so Lewin and his brothers could receive a better education. His father, Leopold, owned a farm jointly with his brother Max however, the farm was legally owned by a Christian because Jews were not permitted to own farms at the time. His father owned a small general store, and the family lived in an apartment above the store. He was one of four children born into a middle-class family. Lewin received an orthodox Jewish education at home. It was a small village of about 5,000 people, about 150 of whom were Jewish. Lewin was born in 1890 into a Jewish family in Mogilno, County of Mogilno, Province of Posen, Prussia (modern Poland).